Almost finished...

Hello:

I have been working on peaches again this morning. As expected I got another 8 quart jars of canned peaches. I had four left over, so I made a bowl of fresh peaches to eat over the weekend.

The picture here is from Santiam Summerfest, a ganster car in my humble opinion.

I now am boiling the last two quart jars of peaches.

Today went so much better than my first effort. This time I heated the water for canner first, then made the light syrup and cooked it up. Then I put on a pot of hot water to put the raw peaches in for 45 seconds in order to peal them easily. Instead of taking almost seven hours to get 12 quarts of peaches, this time I am doing it in 3 hours, including the last one hour cooking the full quarts of peaches in order to seal them.

This is my first effort at canning peaches on my own. There was a slight learning curve here as I had to get things in order before I started it.

My next canning effort will be prunes. I love canned prunes. I have canned those before when I was still married, as no one else in my family liked canned prunes. I have a dozen small mouth jars I can use for prunes.

I got all of my canning jars from a lady who is selling her farm. I got over 3 dozen canning jars for $10.00. Ace Hardware wanted $9.00 for a dozen lids and rings for wide-mouth jars. BiMart and Safeway had the same ones for $4.50. Next year all I need are the lids as I have over 3 dozen rings now that I can use in future years.

I am almost finished with The Magicians. It is not a page-turner like most good mystery novels. But it is a good book nevertheless. I will finish it later today. The rest of this weekend I will re-read The DaVinci Code in preparation of The Lost Symbol coming out on Sept. 15.

Somehow I got a paper cut yesterday on my left hand. I do not remember how I got it, but it does hurt somewhat.

I got about a dozen peach seeds that came from the peach pits I took out of each peach. I plan to plant those soon to see if a peach tree will come up. I don't know whether to let the seeds dry or plant them now. If you have any ideas on it let me know by a private email.

I drank four cups of tea at dinner last night at a Chinese restaurant. Got up this morning at 5:00 am as a result but I went back to bed for a couple of hours at 7:00 am.

I just amazed at what is Chinese food in America. Last night among the three of us that ate there, only the rice is what you would get eating in China; not fried shrimp, not General Tso chicken, not sweet and sour pork. Chinese food in China is just so much better than anything you get here that we call Chinese food.

I am not eating with chopsticks anymore. I need to start that again so I do not lose the practice.

I recorded Kill Bill, Volume 1 and 2 the other night. I may watch these two movies tonight.

Have a great weekend.

Steven